Obama's Dissenters in the State Department Have a Novel Idea: More Bombs

Tout les Toobz are buzzing today about the apparent mutiny within the Department of State regarding what the United States should do about the ongoing carnage in Syria. The consensus of the 51 people who have signed on to the complaint seems to be bomb the hell out of the place, but from a safe distance. Per CNN:

The cable says that U.S. policy in the Middle East has been "overwhelmed" by the continuing violence in Syria. It calls for a "judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process." CNN reviewed a draft of the memo, which has since been classified. The Wall Street Journalfirst reported on the memo's existence. The internal memo was sent throughout the "dissent channel," a mechanism for State Department officials to offer alternative views on foreign policy without freedom of retaliation or retaliation. It was established in the 1960s during the Vietnam War to ensure that senior leadership in the department would have access to alternative policy views on the war.

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(And, not for nothing, but I'm glad there is such a thing as the "dissent channel" within the State Department. It comes from noble origins. Where in the hell it was during the run-up to the Iraq catastrophe is another question entirely.)

The case itself remains unconvincing. There may have been a point at which this country's involvement in a civil war in the Middle East would not have been completely counter-productive, but that moment passed some time in 2002.

The memo calls on the U.S. to create a stronger partnership with moderate rebel forces to battle both Assad's forces and ISIS, which would change the tide of the conflict against the regime and "increase the chances for peace by sending a clear signal to the regime and its backers that there will be no military solution to the conflict." It also warns that as the regime "continues to bomb and starve" Syria's Sunni population, the U.S. will lose potential allies among Syria's Sunni population to fight ISIS. Moreover, it says, U.S. failure to stop the regime's abuses "undermines both morally and materially the unity of the anti-Daesh coalition" and "will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh, even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield." Daesh is an Arabic acronym for ISIS.

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The memo recommends "hard-nosed" diplomacy in combination with "judicious use of stand-off and air weapons." The word "judicious" is doing hard labor in that sentence, and if the population of the region already sees the United States primarily as Death From Above, it's hard to imagine that lobbing a few more Tomahawks into a blasted and devastated country is going to make us more friends. And how these suggestions don't inevitably lead to a proxy war (or worse) with Russia is unclear as well.

The president has faced down criticism for the way he's managed to avoid involving the country in the Syrian civil war while continuing to focus on defeating Daesh where it presently is. He is still trying to find his own answer to the question that bedevils every American president concerning that part of the world: "OK, and then what?"